----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 6:23
PM
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC]
Constellations Of Belief (was Re: How to Cure a Witch...)
Aloha,
On 2/8/2011 1:22 PM, D E wrote:
as a great fan of the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram with
*Charlies Angels* replacing the 'traditional' forms at the quarters (it also
evokes Fox Mulder, Leslie Nielsen, Colombo and Sherlock Holmes), I am not in
the 'finding it flippant' school
I'm assuming that the five
agents in the ritual comprise the three female
angels plus Bosley and the
never seen Charlie? Do you favor the original
TV version or the later
movie reboot?
at the risk of igniting a different and difficult thread,, not read all
of these here today, has any mention been made of the chaos school of
thought, that beleif in any particualr deity is fine, for the purposes of
ritual, but after that, not necessailry?
Let me say upfront
that I'm going at this more seriously than frivolously,
but informally, in
the spirit of sharing ideas rather than assembling a
methodology.
I grew up watching television from a young age.
One of the
foundations of TV watching is the proposition that storytelling
relies on
a willing suspension of disbelief. I learned at a young age, years
before
I could have described it, how to intentionally and actively suspend
or
disengage or unclutch various means and modes that we humans
employ to
evaluate the world around us and how that world works.
I watched
cartoons in which animals wore clothes, talked, danced, sang,
piloted
steamboats, suffered mortal injuries without lasting harm, and all.
I
loved funny animals, and I still do.
I watched a bunch of science
fiction space-faring dramas chock a block
with scenes of SFX model rockets
venturing to faraway planets and
uncanny adventure. I loved space rocket
adventures, and I still do.
But I also watched news shows,
documentaries featuring a range of
scientific and natural history and
ethnographic themes, and commemorations
or celebrations of military
history and technologies and such.
As I recall my young awareness. I
was comfortably able to activate or
unclutch my belief or sense of the
real world according to circumstances or
situation or context in a very
brief span of time, without any disruption
of consciousness or activity. I
could shift immediately from a state of
imaginative play to a state of
alert attention to the real world. And back.
A couple
observations:
1.) I think that the technologies via which we
disseminate our popular
culture and the fullness or thoroughness or
apparent reality with which
those technologies do so does influence our
facility or skill at suspending
and engaging our sense of
belief/disbelief.
Watching TV provided me with skills that may not
have arisen had I grown
up listening to the radio or looking at static
pictures or learning this and that
from local wise folks. What's more, I
did not seek these skills so much as
they happened in me. I had them and
used them in my everyday life from
such an early age that they made my
reality what it was--more expansive
than the physical/sociocultural world
around me.
2.) One of the basic skills that happened in me involves an
ease and
quickness and existential unconcern vis a vis the reality status
of things
in worlds.
A cartoon mouse is a "real" mouse in a
cartoon world. An actual biological
mouse is a "real" mouse in a
documentary world. And in the world where
I walk around looking for clues
about how "real" mice live. What's more,
I can create "real" narratives
about both cartoon and biological mice. And
both narratives possess a
similar reality status as narratives.
I think that is sort of skill
set enabling rapid and repeated shifts among
realities without much
concern for their belief/disbelief status is quite
widespread and common
these days. Certainly it is common and widespread
among Wiccans and Pagans
and such that I know.
One of the outcomes of using this skill set
tends to make belief/disbelief
irrelevant in magical or spiritual
activities. Skill at doing, including doing
rapid shifts among many
potential realities with moderate facility is
what counts.
As
Sabina and several other list members have pointed out. Wicca is about
practices. Wicca is operational spirituality. So are other approaches to
magic
and spirituality, such as Chaos Magic. Practitioners select among a
range
of worlds, and they accord each world an equivalent reality status.
A
cartoon mouse or a character in a made-up story serves the same as a
deity from a particular cultural legacy or a tangible landscape feature or
whatever.
Maybe what's going on here has to do with various skills
we rely on and
various approaches we take in living in and among
realities. Even though
it sounds quirky when I say it, belief of the sort
that I observe among
plenty of Christian adherents just does not seem all
that important or
crucial to Wiccan and Pagan practitioners that I know.
It's not that
important or crucial to me in my magical or spiritual
activities.
Let alone the use of *made up deities which didn't exist ten
minutes before*
You mean like iConfessor, the deity who
perceives confessions on
smartphones and assigns virtual penances?
Musing The Map May Not Be The Territory, But Still, A Simulation
Simulates! Rose,
Pitch